Copyright

October 31, 2012

The wires rise and fall from pole to pole for miles and miles and end where a lone weatherbeaten house stands off the county highway.

The brittle stubble of cornfields stretch flat as far as the eye can see. The October sky above is blue and empty, though there is--strangely-- a band of hazy rust color along the whole horizon that is growing wider.

In the house, the boy's mother hangs up the phone--the line has just gone dead.

She stands still for a moment before stooping to take the bread out of the oven. She brings out a cutting board and a long serrated knife. From the fridge, she takes out the butter dish. From the cupboard, two small plates. These she arranges on the kitchen table. She stands still again, and then she sits in a chair beside the table.

The faucet drips. The sound of a news bulletin on the radio cuts off and is replaced by hissing static. A horsefly taps against the window above the sink. She sits still--stiff almost--and stares at the surface of the table.

She begins to cut her thumbnail into the soft wood of the table’s edge, working it back and forth, cutting deeper. A splinter stabs into the skin under her nail. She winces. Pushing her thumb forward, she drives the splinter in deeper.

The radio goes dead. The ceiling fan slows to a stop. The back screen door rattles a little as a dry and dusty and cool breeze pushes into the kitchen.

Outside, behind the house, her young son--her only child--is trying to catch an ant. He places his cupped hand in the path of a big black ant racing along the cracked earth. It climbs into his palm. He lifts it carefully, as if trying not to spill scooped water, and pours the ant into his other palm, and then pours again onto his forearm.

The ant sprints downward, its legs moving so rapidly the ant seems to hover over the tiny hairs and tide of goosebumps that follow in its wake on the boy's arm. It races straight along the length of the boy's index finger, pauses on the tip, its antennae twitching. The boy lowers his hand and the ant darts into the clump of crabgrass before it.

On his knees, the boy follows the ant's smooth rushes forward and its abrupt stopping. The boy leans closer to the ground. All he can see now is the ant, the crabgrass and the cracked ground. It is a new and vast and varied landscape. Now he is riding the ant, his hands grasping the antennae like reins, steering the ant at top speed through stands of crabgrass trees, over pebble boulders and across gullies of cracked dried mud.

After watching the ant disappear into its underground fortress, the boy stands up. He feels dizzy. He stretches. He looks down at the ant hill and kicks it, cleanly swiping the hill away and exposing dozens of frantic ants. Maybe they will attack him now, he considers. They should, he thinks. It would be fair.

With a start, he hears the slap of the screen door and catches a whiff of freshly baked bread.

He sees his mother coming toward him. She smiles--oddly, it seems to him--but the smile disappears. He sees her apron is smeared with blood. She holds one arm behind her. Her eyes look smeared, too. She has been crying, and maybe still is.

She walks quickly on the flat, packed ground. Almost floating, he thinks. There's an expression on her face he's never seen before. The wind rises. The cornfields rasp. He steps away a pace, and then another. The horizon is black now, and darkness is racing to fill every last corner of the sky.

In bed, you wake alone. She died a while ago. She’s gone. You know that. But she can’t be gone. Things don't fit together if she's not there with you. So, she's there with you, and not there: a ghost. A compromise between your insistent heart and your clear head. A workable solution. Except it’s breaking down little by little. The fact is, she is absent more frequently. The fact is, pieces of the puzzle are missing. The ghost is fading, becoming a ghost of a ghost. But you, too, are growing more distant--confirming her worst fears. Terrified, she is terrifying you now.

***

In the bathroom, you see your face in the mirror and the mirror won't let it go: you must look until you see the truth about yourself.

***

There’s blood running down your clothes in the closet. You seek the source. You find it on a high shelf. It’s a shoebox filled with old letters. You had forgotten about it. It’s dripping.

***

The floorboards above you creak as if someone is walking back and forth in the attic. As you head down the hallway to the door to the attic stairs, you feel queasy. When you get to the end of hallway where the door should be, it’s not there. The strange thing is: you know your house doesn’t have an attic. There’s never been a door here. The stranger thing is: you’re sure you’ve been up there before. And this is where the door was.

***

From the fridge, you remove the photo of your son that's taped there and for the first time you see the menace in his smile.

***

Your first sip of coffee--be careful, it’s still hot!--tastes like the cruelest humiliation of your childhood. The second sip is cooler, but is as bitter as the failure of your career. After the third sip, the coffee is lukewarm and fills your mouth with the poverty of your latter years. You dump the rest into the sink, and look at the grounds that remain in the bottom of the cup. Your future: well, it's probably best to rinse it away.

***

The TV comes on with a click and faint hiss like it always does. But today this makes you shiver with foreboding. The white noise of the world's suffering. You think this, and don't know why. So many forms of it. From the beginning. With no end. Your imagination is not equal to it. Why think this? It’s useless. But today, for the first time, you feel with certainty that you’re becoming part of it. You’re not sure exactly how: as victim or victimizer. Or whether this distinction matters. But your bones feel it. You are about to play--one way or another--a larger role in the world’s woes.

March 14, 2011

"Wondrous is its wallstone: fates have broken, have shattered the city, the work of giants is decaying. The roofs are fallen, the towers in ruins, the towers with barred doors destroyed, frost on the mortar, the ramparts down, fallen, with age under-eaten."

-- A translation from the Old English of a fragment of poetry written in the ninth century CE. Quoted in England: A Concise History by F.E. Halliday

"He would be a smothering cloak, a velvet petal. It was not the thought but the shape of the thought that tormented him. It suspended above him, then mutely dropped, causing his heart to pound so hard, so irregularly, that his skin vibrated and he felt as if he were beneath a lurid mask, sensual yet suffocating."

"We need to turn to our streets and our houses, our trams and our nightclubs, our planning offices and our shopping centers, our factories and our alleyways, our offices and bars and pubs if we are to see ourselves clearly, celebrate our true identities proudly, and cure our many faults effectively. We cannot walk away from these things, and 'escape to the country'. We must learn to love our true selves. We must learn to love our cities."

June 05, 2009

On June 1, I launched My Athens, a blog devoted to what living in Athens, Ga. makes me think about. I’ll likely be thinking and posting a lot about walkability issues, anti-poverty policy, local media, city planning stuff, infrastructure issues and my neighborhood.

I'm no longer posting at Where, though the blog remains one of my favorite blogs about cities. During my brief stint as a contributor there, I found I increasingly wanted to write and think about a particular place, not cities in general. So, I decided to shift what blogging energies I have to My Athens, which is very local and particular indeed.

In the yard where I watch it fall, the rain comes down at several different speeds. In the middle it is a delicate and threadbare curtain (or a net), an implacable but relatively slow descent of quite small drops, a sempiternal precipitation lacking vigor, an intense fragment of the pure meteor. A little away from the walls on each side heavier drops fall separately, with more noise. Some look the size of a grain of corn, others a pea, or almost a marble. On the parapets and balustrades of the window the rain runs horizontally, and on the inside of these obstacles it hangs down in convex loops. It streams in a thin sheet over the entire surface of a zinc roof straight below me—a pattern of watered silk, in the various currents, from the imperceptible bosses and undulations of the surface. In the gutter there, it flows with the contention of a deep but only slightly inclined stream, until suddenly it plunges in a perfectly vertical thread, quite thickly platted, to the ground where it breaks and scatters in shining needles.

Each of these forms has its own particular manner of moving; each elicits a particular sound. The whole thing is intensely alive in the manner of a complicated mechanism, both precise and precarious, like a piece of clockwork in which the activating force is the weight of a mass precipitated from vapor.

The ringing of the vertical threads on the pavement, the gurgling from the gutters, the miniature gong-chimes, multiply and resonate together in a consort which avoids monotony, and is not without delicacy.

And when the pressure is relaxed, some of the clockwork continues to function for a while, getting slower and slower, until the whole machine stops. Then, if the sun comes out again, the whole thing is quite soon effaced—the shiny apparatus evaporates: it has been raining.

November 05, 2008

Coffee and the newspaper on Election Day—Tues, Nov. 4, 2008—here in Athens, Georgia. To distract ourselves from useless anxiety, my wife Lori and I decided to visit polling places in neighborhoods all across town. We took a camera and a voice recorder with us. Here's some of what we saw and heard.

***

Roadside electioneering

Yards signs lining Chase St. during early voting hours in front of Chase Street School, a District 5 polling place. The signs seemed to be no closer than 150 feet of the outer edge of the school (see next photo)—which means they were probably in compliance with election rules. But then again, maybe not: all the signs were gone when we returned to Chase Street School in the early evening.

***

Posted

A warning sign displayed at every polling place we went to today.

***

Early line

Voters in line at the Fowler Drive School polling place. It's 7:20 am.

***

Traffic cop for a day

So many voters showed up so early (this shot was taken at 7:36 am) at Howard B. Stroud School's polling place that assistant principal Guy Cooper decided to help direct voters to parking spots. The polling place serves Athens most heavily African-American voting district.

***

Following through even if God's in control

LaJonya Lett sits in a folding chair outside the polling place at Howard B. Stroud School. Here's what she said: "I'm waiting in line for my husband because he's at work. He'll be off in about 20 minutes. I already voted. I had enough sense to go ahead and vote. I'm holding his spot. I voted on Thursday. It's in the Lord's hands. I see that the polls show that Obama's going to win. But you never know. God's in control."

***

Possible global celebration pending

At the Timothy Road School polling place, where George W. Bush beat John Kerry in 2004, voter Dirk Magwitz said: "If he [Obama] does [win], I think there's going to be a national and global sort of celebration. It will be a very precedent-setting day for an endless number of reasons. There's a lot of energy around this one."

***

A name to note

Parshall Bush has voted in Athens since 1972, and for many years he's cast his ballot here at Whit Davis School, which recorded the city's largest turnout in 2004. Mr. Bush says he doesn't expect to be celebrating tonight. No sir.

***

Meeting neighbors is under-appreciated benefit

Before voting at Whit Davis School Kirk Willis, a history professor at the University of Georgia, explained why he likes to show up at the neighborhood polling place on election day: "If you go downtown and vote early, you're standing in line with people from all over Athens, which is fine and you can kind of meet new people. But given the way we live these days, usually you only see your neighbors in a place like this or a school function…or at the market or the liquor store or some such place."

***

As easy as 1-2-3-4-5

Voting instructions and assorted warnings posted at every polling place.

***

Impacting the future?

An Obama volunteer at the Clarke Co. Democratic Party Headquarters on Prince Ave. checks-up on get-out-the-vote (GOTV) progress while Clarke Co. Democratic Party chair Mac Rawson (not pictured) says, "All the effort that's gone in [to campaigning for Obama] registering voters and getting people active and excited is going to have a lot of long-term consequences for Democrats."

***

Hard times ahead

"Whoever gets in office, it's going to be a tough four years," said Brian Cartwright, who works for Cartwright Properties, a commercial property management company. "Circuit City just closed 155 stores yesterday—and that's before Christmas." Cartwright Properties' offices are located in the same building as the headquarters for the Clarke Co. Republican Party.

***

The loneliness of a campaign volunteer

A lone volunteer works the phones at Clarke Co. Republican Party Headquarters. She was the only person in the office when this shot was taken.

***

Hello. Photo ID, please

Patsy Faye Lewis was an official voter greeter at the Clarke Central High School polling place.

***

First time voter

This is Hillary, who didn't want to give her last name, just moments after she cast her first ever ballot in a presidential election at the Fire Station #3—Five Points polling place. The University of Georgia senior voted for McCain because she was leery of Obama's lack of experience.

***

Cheerleaders

Two young women wave Obama signs at the intersection of W. Broad St. and Milledge Ave.

***

Boredom of poll watching

Gay Williford served as a Democratic Party poll watcher at the Athens Transit Multi-Modal polling place. Her job was to report suspicious activities and, periodically throughout the day, report on the number of people who had voted. As of about 5 pm, she said she had seen no suspicious activities whatsoever. "Another year, I wouldn't mind registering people or driving them to the polls," Williford said. "I think I'd prefer working at the polls. Watching is too boring."

***

A normal Tuesday, business-wise

According to Homer Wilson, it was a normal Tuesday for business at Wilson's His & Hers Styling Shop in downtown Athens. But that's not to say the day was normal in every respect. "No, never have [seen an election like this] before," Wilson said. "We had a voter registration drive here [in the shop earlier in the year], and we registered a lot of people. We have never registered that many people before. Never. I voted in advance. My whole family voted in advance. Everyone here voted in advance."

***

Early voting bad for bake sale

Kathleen Killian (left) and Rachel Julian staff the Chase Street Elementary School Parent Teacher Organization's bake sale table adjacent to the Chase Street School polling place. "Last time they were running to the grocery stores to get treats because we ran out at the primary, so we were all geared up," Julian explained. "And look!" she said, gesturing to all the unsold goodies. "But you know, people waited two and a half hours last Friday. That's where all our customers went."

October 20, 2008

"'Under the sign of death.' Why should not our every utterance come accompanied by a reminder that before too long we will have to say goodbye to this world? Conventions of discourse require that the writer's existential situation, which like everyone else's is a perilous one, and at every moment too, be bracketed off from what he writes. But why should we always bow to convention? Behind every paragraph the reader ought to be able to hear the music of present joy and future grief. Insh'Allah."___ ___ ___

Macht smiles, and in the once grimy and fetid industrial
heart of this racially riven Rust Belt city, every part of his new brew pub—Maschine—shines.

And it's not just the chrome-clad exterior that shines.Inside, the mechanical décor glistens.
The fare, a German cuisine melded with Soul Food and Latino flavors makes
stomachs and cheeks glow with satisfaction. The beers are glorious triumphs.

And the atmosphere—well, how to put it? Maschine radiates genuine multiracial Gemütlichkeit. You'll find out what that means, but first let's follow Macht inside.

June 02, 2008

"Within the [city] walls, virtually the only piece of
the old fabric that remains intact is the crisscross network of its streets,
the straight avenues that run for miles between the gates. These avenues are
lined with spreading plane trees whose branches meet across the road. In
summer, when the trees are in leaf, it is quite dark underneath, so that in a
car you have the curious sensation of driving underwater."

A baboon in the narrowest sense

"All the patients and nurses in the room were staring
at the baboon with undisguised prurience. It was the opening he had been
waiting for. 'This is rampant discrimination,' he shouted, with gleeful rage.
'I realize that I may be—in the narrowest sense of the word—a baboon, but are
you really going to refuse me treatment just because I don't look like
you?'"

Proof of particular affection

"Occasionally, if he wanted to show proof of particular
affection, Mr Thundermug would sidle up to the teacher as they sat together on
the sofa and stroke her hair with his long, delicate fingers, just as he used
to groom and pick the lice out of his wife's coat. This had startled Miss Young
at first, but he did it so rarely and with such wistful sincerity in his eyes
that it always made her tremble with delight, although she was careful to
preserve the severe straight face which she had been taught to adopt at her
teacher-training college. She was supposed to reciprocate by feeding him grapes
or pieces of apple, which she lowered gingerly between his open jaws; or he
would stretch out luxuriantly on the sofa while she stroked the warm, tender
skin of his chest, which reminded her of chamois leather."

--- --- ---

Source:Mr Thundermug: A Novel by Cornelius Medvei,
HarperCollins Publishers, 2007. Listen to a National Public Radio interview
with the author here. Read about less eloquent, less fictional baboons here.

May 02, 2008

When college students cram into homes built for single families, the rot that results is hard to miss. Even if you've never lived in a neighborhood near campus, you'd have no trouble identifying the telltale signs. Trash-strewn yards. Over-parked streets and driveways. Rotting couches on rotting porches. Loud parties into the wee hours.

There is no mystery about why college students make nice, older neighborhoods look crappy when enough of them move in. What is a mystery, though, is why cities and colleges—town and gown—don't seem motivated to do much to prevent the spoiling of these neighborhoods.

Why stop student rot?

But they should be motivated to stop student rot. There are three reasons why.

March 19, 2008

This wish list of city design and city policy features for Lexington, Ky. was created as a brainstorming step for an exercise proposed on Where, a blog devoted to urban issues. Participants in the exercise were encouraged to "go crazy" and "get creative."

My list—which has not been put in priority order and could include many more items—definitely contains some craziness. But I think most of my wishes are pretty tame. Many of them have been suggested by others. Some are already being implemented—at least in part—in the real world.

A pub and grocery in every neighborhood. Everyone should be able to walk to a good, family-friendly pub for a beer, some neighborly companionship and a decent chicken pot pie. And people should be able to walk—not have to drive—to a corner grocery for a gallon of milk.

Tear down the blueglass monstrosity. Let's demolish the Lexington Financial Center. It sticks out like a sore middle finger. And let's not build a 40-story hotel. We need the businesses currently housed in the big glass boxy thing; we need another hotel. But let's build to scale. We're not a big city, and we don't need to pretend to be one to be successful and charming.

Vital diversity is top planning priority. Encouraging mixed-use, commercial and residential, upscale and affordable, low-income and middle-income, black, brown, pink, olive, beige, new and old, in every Lexington neighborhood—all with the goal of preserving existing vitality and diversity or nurturing its growth.

Zero tolerance for homelessness. If you live in town and are temporarily displaced or can't afford shelter, the city should get you a place to live, pronto. And then make sure you get the help you help yourself to get back on your feet ASAP.

Urban focused local newspaper. A paper that really obsessed about helping readers understand city issues well could help build a constituency for good city living. Here's a proposal for such a newspaper.

Wide sidewalks everywhere. The sidewalk grid should be as complete as the road grid, and the sidewalks themselves should be wide enough so couples could walk side-by-side.

Stallion Transit. This is Lexington's new regional transit service, and it makes taking the bus something you'll actually want to do. There are more buses, more routes, more bus stops and lower fares. But what makes the experience really cool are the custom-designed mid-size buses. They're sleek, silver, surprisingly roomy and free of advertising. The bus shelters are cool, too, and almost always include a bench.

Stop student rot, end campus prohibition. To prevent student rot from blighting nice neighborhoods near campus, the university should build cool student dormitories and require freshmen (at least) to live there. The university should also end on-campus prohibition, and allow of-age students to drink.

Connect the spokes. Lexington's wheel and spoke road system contributes to this small city's fiendish traffic. If more spokes were connected, motorists could find alternatives to clogged spoke roads.

Powerful neighborhoods group. Lexington needs a strong citywide group that champions walkable neighborhoods and fights developer-pushed sprawl. Read my suggestion for such a group here.

Enough with the eternal red lights! Let's prevent the build-up of stopped traffic from blocking intersections downstream and ease across-town travel by changing the street light cycle more frequently everywhere, but especially on major thoroughfares.

Drain the puddles. Almost any appreciable rainfall here results in big, splashy puddles forming in the streets. Other cities have built storm water sewers—some since ancient times—to handle this problem.

jobHarmony.net. This is an employment program, not just a web site. This is where local employers match up with job seekers. This is where employers work with technical colleges to custom-design and quickly implement skill-training courses for their needs. This is where job seekers and workers can access micro-loans to pay for cars, housing costs, new clothes, new skills.

IncuBank. At this quasi-private sector financial and property management company, local small businesspeople and entrepreneurs can apply for start-up loans and subsidies on commercial space and equipment—and get the chance to open their businesses in prime locations throughout the city.

A state earned income tax credit. The city should push the state to offer a state earned income tax credit in addition to the federal credit. This will help put more money in the pockets of local low-income workers—money that, as it's spent or saved, stabilizes the workers and their families and flows back into the local economy.

Bury the wires. Start putting power and communications cables underground. Take streetlights off overhanging wires and mount them on poles like real cities do.

Start Vine Street with a park. Close the street to thru-traffic at Triangle Park, and make the park a welcoming, vine-covered pedestrian plaza connecting the convention center with downtown street life.

Oh yes, and remove the elevated walkway. Give strollers at the new pedestrian plaza Triangle Park an unobstructed view of Vine St. by taking down the very 70ish elevated walkway sticking out from the convention center.

Two-way streets downtown. No city's downtown should be a mere thoroughfare for people going elsewhere. But that's what Lexington's is.

Bust property bums fast. When homeowners, renters or absentee landlords violate housing codes, they should be ticketed or fined promptly.

Tow sidewalk blockers. When thoughtless drivers park their cars across sidewalks, the cars should be towed to junkyards and crushed into blocks of scrap metal. (Well, at least they should get tickets.) Sidewalks are for walking, not parking.

Horseback helpers. Not only should there be more cops on horseback, but there should also be a regiment of mounted and uniformed concierges to help guide tourists and townies alike to downtown destinations.

Stop hiding certain neighborhoods. Lexington has had a habit of trying to isolate and block certain low-income neighborhoods from the rest of the city. It also allows certain high-income neighborhoods to act like exclusive enclaves. This unacknowledged policy should be reversed, and efforts made to stitch all neighborhoods together into one whole city fabric.

Put a dog park/coffee shop combo near downtown. The fenced-in dog park doesn't have to be big. Nestled right next to it should be a coffee shop where you can get a cup and then sit down to talk to fellow dog-owners while watching the dogs.

February 27, 2008

"At a very deep level, the city seems to express our culture's restless dream about its inner conflicts and its inability to resolve them. On a more conscious level, this ambivalence expresses itself in mixed feelings of pride, guilt, love, fear, and hate toward the city. The fascination people have always felt at the destruction of a city may be partly an expression of satisfaction at the destruction of an emblem of irresolvable conflict."

What happens when experiencing the city in real life

"The basic problem is how to reduce a cacophony of impressions to some kind of harmony. … The inhabitant or visitor basically experiences the city as a labyrinth, although one with which he may be familiar. He cannot see the whole of a labyrinth at once, except from above, when it becomes a map. Therefore his impressions of it at street level at any given moment will be fragmentary and limited: rooms, buildings, streets. These impressions are primarily visual, but involve the other senses as well, together with a crow of memories and associations. The impressions a real city makes on an observer are thus both complex and composite even without taking into account his or his culture's pre-existing attitudes."

The impossibility and necessity of imagining the city

"The city is, on the one hand, incomprehensible to its inhabitants; as a whole it is inaccessible to the imagination unless it can be reduced and simplified. But on the other hand, any individual citizen, by virtue of his particular choices of alternatives for action and experience, will need a vocabulary to express what he imagines the entire city to be."

Cities provoke clash of contradictory feelings

"Clashing contradictions: perhaps the central fascination of the city, both real and fictional, is that it embodies man's contradictory feelings—pride, love, anxiety, and hatred—toward the civilization he has created and the culture to which he belongs."

February 20, 2008

A law professor I know is looking for a novel that celebrates the virtues of city life. She can't think of one. Neither can I.

In the law and literature course that she teaches, her students read—among other works and writers—Fidelity: Five Stories by Wendell Berry. Like many of Berry's stories, these take place in Port Williams, a fictional rural community in Kentucky. I haven't read these particular stories but they are, I'm told, complex and subtle and celebrate what Berry thinks are the virtues of life in a small farming community.

Is there fiction that does the same thing for big cities?

"I've combed through my book shelves," the professor says, "and I can't find anything that treats an urban community as the kind of 'value' protective environment that Berry seems to have created."

Cities play important roles in lots of fiction. As settings, of course. As characters in their own right—think of Dublin in Ulysses or Dubliners by James Joyce, for example. As metaphors and images. But, like the professor, I can't think of any novels or stories that explicitly celebrate the moral and community virtues of city life.

February 13, 2008

As part of a project to gather useful and interesting sources of information about cities, I've identified a handful of print format magazines (with Web sites) devoted to covering urban issues. These are not academic journals; they are not blogs. (I'll gather those later.) Here's what I've found so far:

American City & County is aimed at an audience of city, county and state officials. Every month it covers a wide range of city-related issues, including economic development, technology and infrastructure.

Governing Magazine is a monthly magazine that frequently focuses on state government, but also has strong coverage of local issues. Congressional Quarterly, Inc publishes the magazine.

Government Technology covers issues such as congestion pricing technologies, voting machines, GIS, cyber-security, and features case studies about how local and state governments use technology.

Nation's Cities Weekly is a publication of the National League of Cities. The weekly is available in a downloadable format.

The Next American City is a quarterly devoted to promoting what it calls "socially and environmentally sustainable economic growth in America’s cities and suburbs."

February 11, 2008

"What is so good about having faith when you don't have evidence? What is the real advantage to that? Why is this something that we want to encourage? Why not say, as I do with my daughter, 'Let's see some proof.' She asked her friend, who believes in Jesus, if she could wait up one night and see Him for herself, and it didn't happen. Why is that OK? Why is it OK for scientists to say that skepticism is the default position, except when it comes to mainstream religion?"

— Natalie Angier

--- --- --- Source: From "God vs. Science: A Debate Between Natalie Angier and David Sloan Wilson Moderated by Thomas A. Bass." The debate took place April 12, 2007 at the University at Albany, State University of New York. The transcript for this debate—from which this quote is taken—is posted on www.edge.org, the Web site of the Edge Foundation, Inc.

Read a bio of Natalie Angier, who is a science reporter for The New York Times, here. David Sloan Wilson, is a professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University in New York. Read his bio here.

February 06, 2008

FixMyStreet.com is a Web site where city residents can take quick, visible steps toward getting city problems fixed.

Let's say your neighbor's garbage carts have been overflowing for weeks or the sidewalk down the street is crumbling or your other neighbor just had their fourth loud late-night party this week. At FixMyStreet.com you can report the problem publicly—and, if you want to, pinpoint it on a map with a photo you've uploaded and a brief description.

Staff at the Web site quickly reviews your report to make sure it's a complaint that city government can do something about. They make sure you're not a crank. If you check-out, they post your report on the Web site and categorize it by location and type of complaint.

If that's all they did, the site might just be a good way to let off steam. But what happens next is key: the Web site reports the problem to the appropriate agency at the city on your behalf and then publicly tracks whether the problem gets resolved.

FixMyStreet.com is a Web site in the United Kingdom, and I have no idea whether it's working well or not.

Assuming that the idea works, I can't help but wonder if citywide neighborhood groups might benefit from launching similar Web sites here in the United States. (Are there such Web sites? I haven't found any, but I haven't looked very hard.)

A well-managed, well-publicized site like this could be an effective tool for groups pushing for more responsiveness from city government on code enforcement, road maintenance and other quality of life issues.

The purpose of pain is to say to the brain:
Ow! Houston we’ve got a problem…
But once we’ve got the message we don’t need it again and again…

What do we want? Symptom Relief!
When do we want it? Now!

When you’ve had enough of it there’s just no need to suffer it
Just pop a little caplet and Ibuprofen will buffer it

I've had a go with Aspirin, Codeine and Paracetamol
With Solpadeine, Co-codamol, with Anadin and Ultramol
I love them all, I really do, but I prefer Ibuprofen

There are other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs around
Your NSAID’s these days are quite thick on the ground
There’s Naproxen, there's Nabumetone
and, of course, there's Indomethacin
Each with much to offer us. But I prefer Ibuprofen

I love the way the compound sticks its cheeky little hand in
The way it blocks the enzyme that creates the prostaglandin

Reducing fever, inflammation, and mild to moderate pain

Yes I know it isn’t curative, in anyway preventative
But to dwell on what it doesn’t do is anally retentative
I know it doesn’t treat the cause, the cause will still be there
But it lends a hand, it puts the ‘pal’ back into palliative care.

It does exactly what you’d expect it to say it would do if it came in a tin

January 11, 2008

In an essay peppered with manifesto-like slogans in the December 2007 issue of The Atlantic, Hirschorn—an editor at the magazine—argues that "serious" news such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times print on their front pages needs to be "sexed-up." He says such news needs to be "marketed with the kind of zeal that so far only [media-baron, owner of the New York Post and now The Wall Street Journal Rupert] Murdoch has been willing to muster."

Hirschorn's right, I think. It's important to understand, though, that he's not saying that newspapers will survive only if they fill their pages with irresponsible, sensationalistic crap.

December 12, 2007

"How strange, how indescribably strange, that behind the wall, this very wall, there's a man with an angry face sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out, wearing red boots"

"His overcoat was long and thick, of a purple hue, either plaid or striped, or maybe, damn it all, polka dot."

"On those days, I would try to manufacture a joyous mood for myself. I would like down on my bed and smile. I'd smile for twenty minutes at a time, but then the smile would turn into a yawn."

"Reason? Rapture? Rectangle? Rib? Or: Mind? Misery? Matter?"

"Marina told me that one Sharik visited her in bed. Who, or what, this Sharik was I couldn't for the life of me determine."

What the hell is this? you may ask. These are lines from very short stories by a Russian writer named Daniil Kharms (1905-1942), who starved to death in the psychiatric ward of a Soviet prison during the siege of Leningrad.

The lines above are taken from a handful stories by Kharms published in the New Yorker. You can read the full stories--the longest of which is about 625 words--here. They were translated from the Russian by Matvei Yankelvich, Simona Schneider and Eugene Ostashevsky.

December 05, 2007

"Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise, and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old."

November 14, 2007

Zen Habits is a blog that offers tips on how to be more productive, but also gives concrete advice about how to do nothing. It offers lots of advice about doing things that will make you happier, but does so without promising permanent bliss.

November 09, 2007

If you're curious about what your city's underground infrastructure looks like but are too chicken to climb down into a storm water tunnel or to lift a heavy metal grate and drop into a utility tunnel, you'll want to take a look at The Vanishing Point.

This site documents one man's explorations of our industrial infrastructure and landscape. Much of his travels are underground in sewer tunnels, but he also explores power generation plants and abandoned, dilapidated industrial buildings.

October 17, 2007

You kill feral cats when you have the chance, don't you?That's the question I asked of a woman who loves National Public Radio, her husband, songbirds, shooting and her dogs. She lives on a couple acres in rural Wisconsin. Her answer:

October 10, 2007

"[Science] has no real agenda. What I mean by this is that by its very nature science cannot be forced in any particular direction. The necessarily open nature of science (notwithstanding the secret work carried out in the Cold War and in some commercial laboratories) ensures that there can only ever be a democracy of intellect in this, perhaps the most important of human activities. What is encouraging about science is that it is not only powerful as a way of discovering things, politically important things as well as intellectually stimulating things, but it has now become important as metaphor. To succeed, to progress, the world must be open, endlessly modifiable, unprejudiced. Science thus has a moral authority as well as an intellectual authority."